Seema Shah is a faculty member in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center Department of Bioethics and has a joint appointment at the Division of AIDS. Her research focuses on the ethics of international research, the ethics of research with children, and the intersection of law and bioethics. She currently serves as a consultant for the Division of AIDS on its clinical sciences review committee and as an ethics consultant for the Clinical Center.

She earned her bachelor's and juris doctor degrees from Stanford University. She previously served as a federal law clerk in the Eastern District of California and a predoctoral fellow in the NIH Department of Bioethics.

She has lectured on the ethics of clinical research at conferences run by PRIM&R, ASBH, IAB, ASTMH, and internationally in such locations as Botswana, South Africa, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, and Mali.